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Kevin Garnett (left) and the Celtics next play Orlando in the Eastern Conference finals. Where LeBron James (right) plays next is a mystery that will keep the Cavaliers on edge.

The Journal provides minute-by-minute analysis of the Boston Celtics’ 94-85 victory over the Cleveland Cavaliers to win their National Basketball Association playoff Eastern Conference semifinal series four games to two. Guest blogger Zach Lowe offers commentary on the game and the ESPN telecast.

This feels important, doesn’t it? And maybe it is. Maybe a loss tonight really would push LeBron James to leave Cleveland, hurtling the Cavaliers back into obscure mid-market mediocrity and opening a half-decade window of contention for whichever team signs James. Or maybe James has already made his decision, and tonight’s game is just another elimination game.

Even in that case, we still get to watch the team with the league’s best regular-season record fight for its season against an aging champion working to delay its own fade from contention — a fade that had supposedly begun when the calendar flipped to 2010.

Everything begins with James, who is coming off perhaps the single worst game of his career — a 3-of-14 stink bomb in which 11 of his 14 field-goal attempts were long jump shots. James spent much of the game drifting around the perimeter, looking strangely passive against a defense that wasn’t doing anything new or fancy to stop him. The Cavs need James to at least resemble the player who knifed through the Celtics’ defense over and over in a masterful 38-point performance in Boston in Game 3.

Cleveland also needs to reverse some troubling statistical trends. The Cavs, the league’s second-best 3-point shooting team in the regular season, have hit just 27 percent from deep against Boston. They’re barely getting any offensive rebounds, they’re losing the turnover battle against a Boston team that is among the league’s most turnover-prone, and their secondary players, particularly Mo Williams and Antawn Jamison, have been helpless on defense and ineffective on offense.

It would also help if they could slow down Rajon Rondo, who is averaging a Magic Johnson-like 21 points, 12 assists and 7 rebounds per game in this series and destroying whichever player Cleveland head coach Mike Brown puts in front of him. If they can’t limit Rondo — and if Boston brings something close to its best defense — Cleveland’s season may end tonight.

We are live from my apartment in the Upper East Side, about three long blocks East of an area where LeBron might want to check out some real estate soon.

My favorite stat of the series, per John Schuhmann at NBA.com: The Celtics have scored 87 second-chance points, or about 1.71 points per offensive rebound. That is an astronomical number; the league average this season was about 1.21 second-half points per offensive rebound. Ray Allen especially killed Cleveland in Game 5 on kick-out threes after offensive rebounds.

And Boston was one of the very worst offensive rebounding teams in the regular season!

Oh, and per that same NBA.com story: According to Cleveland’s internal stats, Ray Allen is shooting just 23 percent on threes in Boston’s half court offense and 83 percent — 83 percent! — on threes in transition and after offensive rebounds. If Cleveland wants to stay alive, they must limit the C’s transition chances.

KG makes another jumper over Shaq, who is clearly uncomfortable jumping out too far on KG. Meanwhile, Antawn Jamison, who has been unable to stop KG in the post, has to deal with C’s center Kendrick Perkins. Mike Brown is officially panicking, and the game has just started.

Mo Williams hits a lay-up off a pick-and-roll (boy does he need more of those), and the C’s follow up by going right to Perkins in the post against Jamison. Poor Antawn has no shot. Perk backs him down and draws a foul. He misses both free throws, though, so it remains 8-4.

Mo Williams has taken a shot on each of the last three Cleveland possessions — he made one three, missed a contested three in transition (an awful shot — a classic heat check) and then missed a tough fast-break lay-up. Mo’s had a tough series, but he’s trying hard to get himself going tonight.

Perkins and Rondo run a beautiful screen/roll, and Jamison, guarding the C’s center, gets totally lost. Rondo passes to Perkins for an easy slam, and it’s suddenly 14-7, Boston. The C’s are 7-of-11 from the floor to start.

And by the first ad break, we already have a WSJ.com commenter asking where LeBron will play next season. Let’s be honest: Nobody really knows. Gun to my head? Miami. Wild card: New Jersey. Super-wild card: Dallas, via a sign-and-trade with Erick Dampier’s non-guaranteed contract.

Poor Shaq. This is not what he signed up for — guarding KG on the perimeter and in screen/rolls with Boston’s guards. Shaq can’t play this kind of defense anymore, and it’s a little preposterous that Mike Brown is asking him to. Shaq fouls Ray Allen on a drive, and Ray hits both free throws.

That felt important. James (not wearing the elbow sleeve, we must note) hits Mo Williams on a backdoor cut for a lay-up, plus the foul. Two guys who must play well tonight connect on a nice basket. 20-14, and Anderson Varejao enters the game for Shaq.

Tony Allen “fouls” LeBron James before the Cavs inbound the ball under the Boston basket, and that’s an automatic two-shot foul. Tough to tell what Allen did there — he was caught in between several players jostling for position under the rim. LeBron makes 1-of-2.

Mike Brown continues to try to find a winning combination up front — now he’s got Zydrunas Ilgauskas at center and Varejao at power forward, so he’s going with a big lineup. Rasheed Wallace hits a jumper over Ilgauskas right away. 22-15, Boston.

And just as LeBron gets going, the refs whistle him for bumping Rondo in the open floor — and that’s two on James. If there was any contact there, it was very, very minor. Rondo may have just fallen down. Bad break for the Cavs.

The C’s end the quarter like they end every quarter: By isolating for Paul Pierce and watching him miss a ridiculously tough fade-away. Hey, Boston: You’ve been running that since 1999. People know it’s coming now.

Stat of the quarter: Boston has six turnovers already, including four by Rondo alone.

Thing of the quarter: The Cavs going ultra-big early, with Ilgauskas, Varejao and James in the front court, and Jamario Moon (6’8”) and West (6’4”) at the guard spots. That line-up was together for only a minute or two, but Boston had problems attacking it. There are no short guys for Ray Allen to shoot over.

Ray Allen dunks (!) in transition off a pass from Rondo, and Mo Williams gives Ray a little love tap on the head for a foul. Replays show the love tap may not have actually made contact. Ray hits the foul shot, and it’s 31-23, Boston. A quick start to the 2nd quarter.

The Celtics force another turnover, which allows Rajon Rondo to get out in transition. He finds Tony Allen trailing for a lay-up, and it’s suddenly 33-23, Boston. Timeout, Cavs. Turnovers and poor offense with James on the bench are killing Cleveland. Mike Brown may have to bring LeBron in right away after this timeout. Rondo, meanwhile, might not come out as long as the game is in the balance.

Dumb play of the game so far: Mo Williams has LeBron streaking down the right side wide open on a 3-on-2. Mo elects to keep the ball and ends up losing it out of bounds without getting a shot off. Awful. How much could LeBron and Cleveland use an emphatic, crowd-quieting dunk?

And by the way: On the prior possession, LeBron had Rondo on him and was calling for the ball down low. The Cavs ignored him.

Trouble for Boston: Pierce picks up his 3rd foul — a charge drawn by Varejao as Pierce lumbered down the lane, passed the ball and collided with Varejao. Jeff Van Gundy: “That’s a college foul.” Varejao scores on the other end to bring the Cavs within two. That’s eight unanswered for a Cavs team that is fighting hard.

What can you say about Rondo? A coast-to-coast lay-up highlighted by a right-to-left cross-over juke that left Jamario Moon grasping at air near the foul line. Poor guy. But Varejao answers with a dunk on a screen/roll to keep the margin at four.

The Cavs have turned up their D and placed LeBron on Rondo. Boston doesn’t quite know what to do. They try to get the ball to Ray Allen (defended by the much smaller Williams) but they can’t. Of course, Rondo makes a 20-footer to end the possession — the exact shot Cleveland wants the C’s to take.

We’ll see if the Cavs commit to the LeBron/Rondo match-up for more than a few possessions. After a ton of hype about the possible match-up, LeBron guarded Rondo on just nine possessions in Game 5 — six of which came consecutively early in the game.

Hey, guess what? Mo hits a lay-up in transition, and the Cavs are within 1. The Celtics have struggled on offense since LeBron shifted onto Rondo, who goes to the bench for the first time today. 30 points combined for Mo and LeBron.

The Cavs take the lead on a put-back by Shaq. They actually got 2 offensive rebounds on that possession; they’ve been averaging just 7 per game in this series, a mark that would have ranked dead last in the NBA in the regular season. It’s quiet in Boston.

You get the sense that Boston had its chance to blow this open and didn’t do it, and that this will be a dogfight the rest of the way. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but the Cavs believe they can win this game and this series.

The teams already have 19 turnovers between them. Lots of shaky passes and bad gambles, but also very active defense.

Classic Tony Allen play: The Cavs inbound with just 2 on the shot clock, and Tony Allen is defending the inbounder. He kicks the inbounds pass out of bounds. The shot clock resets to 14. Tony stares at the ceiling, bewildered. Celtics fans have been making that same expression after similar Tony plays since he came into the league.

Rondo commits his 3rd foul by wrapping up Shaq under the hoop to prevent a lay-up. I’m not sure that’s good cost-benefit analysis. Rondo is now in minor foul trouble, all for the sake of saving one point, as Shaq makes 1-of-2. But wait! There’s a lane violation, which happens on every O’Neal free throw, so he gets a do-over. He makes that one. We’re tied.

How big a deal are those three fouls each on Pierce and Rondo? Michael Finley has played almost seven minutes already. He logged just 19 minutes in the first five games combined, mostly in garbage time. He’s 0-of-2 from the floor and a team-worst -5 for Boston in plus/minus.

Finley can’t guard anyone, so if he’s missing, he has no value. How long can Pierce and Rondo go into the 2nd half before picking up their 4th fouls?

Amazing: ESPN has sent a poor reporter to Cleveland’s arena (the Quicken Loans arena) to watch the game on the big scoreboard with fans. Where does that assignment rank on the scale of sad assignments? Not nearly as bad as the TV reporter caught in the hurricane but worse, I think, than the reporter covering some elementary school play.

The Celtics open the half with Ray Allen guarding LeBron, since Pierce has 3 fouls. Let’s see if LeBron attacks. Nope — but he dishes to Anthony Parker, and there’s that three-pointer the Cavs have been waiting for! Cavs by 3 — their biggest lead of the game.

Mike Brown goes back to Shaq on KG. He might want to bite the bullet and just sit Shaq in favor of Varejao. The C’s go back to KG even with Shaq on him, and he hits Rondo on a gorgeous give-and-go to give Boston the lead. That’s a 6-0 spurt, all from KG in the post.

By the way, developing story of the game: Mo Williams is working his butt off defensively on Ray Allen. The C’s have abused that match-up in Games 1-5, but not tonight. Mo is fighting through screens and sticking right with Allen, who is just 2-of-6 overall and 0-of-4 from deep. If he doesn’t get going, Boston is in trouble.

Some feistiness! First, Shaq with a King Kong Bundy-esque splash on Perkins as the two tumble to the ground going for a loose ball on Boston’s end; even Van Gundy says it looks like something out of the WWE. Remember how King Kong Bundy used to demand the refs count to 5 after his patented splash? I think Shaq could have held Perk down for the five-count there.

And then the two get tangled up on the other end, and Perkins throws a bit of an elbow at Shaq’s head as he untangles himself. Double technical. That should really just be a tech on Perk.

The C’s force a turnover, and Pierce, so quiet until now, hits a huge three! The C’s then get a stop after a bizarre sequence in which Varejao tries to get the ref’s attention to let him know he’s bleeding and that the game should stop. The game continues, Williams misses an open three, and the C’s find KG for an open jumper on the other end. He nails it! Time out, Cavs!

KG has 18 points on 9-of-13 shooting. He looks exhausted — hands on knees a lot — but he’s been the difference in this game. Doc will need to get him rest soon, though.

Meanwhile, this is now officially Cleveland’s last stand. It’s time for LeBron and the Cavs to rally if they’ve got it in them.

Oh, wow. There’s LeBron. The C’s turn it over in transition (a sloppy Ray Allen pass), and LeBron bowls down the lane, draws contact on Rasheed Wallace under the hoop and finishes with his left hand as if Sheed isn’t even there. Amazing strength and body control. James hits the foul shot.

And the C’s answer quickly with back-to-back threes; the triples are starting to drop now. First it’s Rasheed Wallace (still among the living, apparently), then it’s Pierce again on the wing. The Cavs are on the ropes…

The Celtics bench will now have to hold the lead. Pierce just picked up his 4th, and he’s on the bench. KG is resting; he needed it. Glen Davis, Tony Allen and Rasheed Wallace are in, and the Cavs rattle off four quick points sandwiched around a bad Tony Allen turnover.

I’m pretty sure Anderson Varejao thinks he’s never committed a foul. He screams at the refs after they whistle him for contact with Glen Davis. But Varejao has that incredulousness in common with every guy in the NBA.

A nice swing for Boston, all created by Tony Allen, who just defended LeBron beautifully in the post. He stripped LeBron as James went up for a short shot — LeBron’s 7th turnover of the game — and came down as the trailer at the other end. Rondo found him, and Allen drew a foul.

But he misses both free throws, blowing a chance to bring the lead back to double-digits. Both teams are around 70 percent at the line, so they are canceling each other out with bad foul shooting.

A word about LeBron: The announcers are ripping into him for being too tentative, passing too often, not shooting enough.

I disagree. He’s taken 16 shots (so he’s on pace for about 21 or 22) and 10 foul shots, and he’s turned the ball over 7 times. All of those numbers are game highs. He’s doing what he can — especially considering we know he’s not 100 percent and may be playing at considerably less than that.

So Rajon Rondo does this thing in transition that has me torn. When he’s racing the ball up at midcourt and feels a defender make contact with him in an attempt to foul and stop the fast break, Rajon just chucks the ball wildly at the basket. His argument: The foul should be a shooting foul. Mark Jackson agrees, saying Rondo got robbed of three foul shots after pulling this trick just now.

I’m torn. Rondo doesn’t start his shooting motion until he feels the contact, so is he really shooting? Should we reward a player for something like that?

78-74, Boston.You see that score right there, just to the left of this text? LeBron just made two pull-up threes in a row to cut the lead to four. Wow. Those are his first perimeter baskets of the entire game, and they came when Cleveland absolutely had to have them.

They came around Boston’s worst possession of the game. Rondo spent the entire possession dribbling at the top of the arc as Ray Allen tried and failed to get open for a perimeter shot. The Cavs are doing an amazing job on Allen, who is 2-of-8 overall and 0-of-5 from deep. Rondo had to shoot a three as the shot clock expired. He missed, and LeBron hit his second three in a row a few seconds later.

Time out Boston, and I’d expect Garnett and Pierce to be back on the floor when we get back.

True story: A colleague and I were having a conversation two weeks ago about how Hollywood remakes old movies because they are just out of ideas. I randomly said, “I can’t believe they haven’t done a new Karate Kid yet.”

Antawn Jamison misses a jumper. He’s now 1-of-8. I should probably mention that there’s a pretty decent chance Cleveland could have acquired Amare Stoudemire from Phoenix if they had been willing to part with J.J. Hickson.

Wallace, beleaguered all year for his lazy play, hits a three, and the C’s then steal the ball from Mo Williams for Cleveland’s 18th turnover. Yeesh.

Rondo finds KG for a rim-rattler on the break, and this is officially the loudest Boston’s crowd has been all season. C’s by 14, and it’s now or never for Cleveland. I’m not sure they have another run in them. A huge, huge performance by two-thirds of Boston’s Big Three down the stretch here.

Rondo banks in a floater over Varejao that had no business going in. None. He was off-balance, legs splaying all over the place, and he went glass. If that’s the coda, it’s a fitting coda. This has been Rajon Rondo’s series.

Parker nails a three form the corner, and we’re not done here yet! The Cavs get a stop, but LeBron can’t finish a spinning drive on the other end that would have cut the lead to 6. He pleads for a foul on Pierce, but the replays show Pierce went straight up.

That’s a call LeBron will get now and then. He doesn’t get it here, and time is running out.

LeBron dunks to cut the lead to 7, the lowest it has been in a while. On the other end, the Cavs do what they need to do: They strip Pierce on his way up for a shot. But Garnett picks up the loose ball, giving Boston another chance. He misses a flip shot but recovers the rebound and kicks out to Rondo, who resets as Doc calls a timeout to calm things down.

Huge offensive rebounds from Garnett. A golden chance for Cleveland to cut the lead to 5 or 4 vanishes.

Wow. LeBron James just put up a triple-double: 27 points, 10 assists and 19 rebounds. Nineteen! And yet all anyone will focus on is his failure to carry the Cavaliers past Boston, a stunning end to a season in which Cavaliers won a league-high 61 games. James shot 8-of-21 from the floor, well below his normal accuracy, and turned the ball over 9 times — one turnover away from a dubious quadruple-double. He also attempted 12 foul shots, another game-high.

I’ll say this: He did not go down jacking perimeter shots or drifting around the wing, watching the Cavs offense, as he did in Game 5. James worked tonight. It just wasn’t enough, and we will have days to dissect why: whether it was his injured elbow, Mike Brown’s endless line-up juggling, a disastrous performance by Antawn Jamison on both ends or the general failure of Cleveland’s supporting players to produce.

And, of course, the Celtics. The other team. The 2008 champions everyone wrote off two months ago. Rajon Rondo was magnificent again, with 21 points and 12 assists on 9-of-15 shooting, and this was his series as much as it was James’s.

And it was Kevin Garnett’s series, too. In what might be something of a bad omen for the Magic, who play their own perimeter-oriented power forward, Garnett re-emerged in this series as an offensive force in the low post. He towered over Jamison and rained jumpers over O’Neal when Mike Brown switched Shaq onto Garnett tonight in something of a panic move. Garnett averaged 19 points per game for the series on 52 percent shooting.

The Celtics still have weapons, and they still have a defense that held the Cavaliers to a production level below the equivalent of 100 points per 100 possessions in four of these six games. That includes tonight, when the Cavs scored the equivalent of about 93 points per 100 possessions. To put that in perspective, the worst offensive team in the league this season (the Nets) averaged about 101 points per 100 possessions.

The focus now goes to LeBron’s future in Cleveland and the conference finals in Boston. Barring a trade, Cleveland is stuck with this core through 2012. Mo Williams, Andy Varejao and Antawn Jamison will earn about $30 million combined per season through 2012, meaning if the Cavaliers do re-sign James, they will have little room to maneuver under the cap until that season, when the Williams/Varejao/Jamison contracts would be expiring deals.

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